President Trump recognizes political reality — and he has proved this to be true once again.
I have previously proclaimed this about President Trump. He is a man who lives in the world of political reality in a way that most politicians do not.
Most politicians are so ideologically attached to their positions that even if those positions start to go wrong with the American people, they hold to them. Sometimes, that is to be commended so the differentiation between parties is clear.
I’m clearly an ideological person. I have a set of beliefs that fit into a broader worldview. And I think that is helpful to my listeners so they know where I’m coming from.
But for President Trump to be successful, he has to continue to be as pragmatic as he has been in the past. On Thursday, he made clear that he would be exactly that.
In an article titled “Trump puts new limits on Elon Musk,” Politico reports:
President Donald Trump convened his Cabinet in person on Thursday to deliver a message: You’re in charge of your departments, not Elon Musk. According to two administration officials, Trump told top members of his administration that Musk was empowered to make recommendations to the departments but not to issue unilateral decisions on staffing and policy. Musk was also in the room.
The meeting followed a series of mass firings and threats to government workers from the billionaire Tesla founder, who helms the Department of Government Efficiency, that created broad uncertainty across the federal government and its workforce. … Trump stressed that he wants to keep good people in government and not to eject capable federal workers en masse.
In this meeting, President Trump basically suggested using a scalpel, not a chainsaw. Then, he put out a statement on X to that exact same effect, saying:
The Golden Age of America has just begun! Over the past six weeks, our Administration has delivered on promises like no Administration before it, always putting America First! DOGE has been an incredible success, and now that we have my Cabinet in place, I have instructed the Secretaries and Leadership to work with DOGE on Cost Cutting measures and Staffing. As the Secretaries learn about, and understand, the people working for the various Departments, they can be very precise as to who will remain, and who will go.
We say the “scalpel” rather than the “hatchet.” The combination of them, Elon, DOGE, and other great people will be able to do things at a historic level. We just had a meeting with most of the Secretaries, Elon, and others, and it was a very positive one. It’s very important that we cut levels down to where they should be, but it’s also important to keep the best and most productive people. We’re going to have these meetings every two weeks until that aspect of this very necessary job is done. The relationships between everybody in that room are extraordinary. They all want to get to the exact same place, which is, simply, to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
President Trump is reading the tea leaves. He understands many people are going to start targeting these broad-level cuts without specificity and pointing to victims’ stories. And, of course, there will be victims’ stories — because when you move fast and break things the way you would at a tech company, then people who lose their jobs become sympathetic.
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There can be some things that get broken that actually might not need to get broken. So Trump stepped in to say, “Listen, at the very beginning, we went super hard, but now, it’s time to actually make sure that we don’t break anything that we need and that the departments review and take the recommendations under consideration. Then, with a scalpel, not a baseball bat, go through their departments.”
That is a smart move by President Trump.
A lot of people are painting this as a sort of flip by President Trump. It is not. This is what President Trump always does.
He course-corrects to the most successful position.
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